With the advent of Google Wave looking like it could replace Independent Learning Centre. And Google Docs now being used heavily by students — news article link. It’s not so far fetched to assume that students will have laptops running the Google OS while reading on Google Books.

The iPhone Safari browser supports several extra protocols to launch their corresponding apps:
Apple documentation on iPhone integration

• sms ex. Text this ( <a href=”sms:5555555555″>Text this</a> ) For SMS texting
• tel ex. Phone this ( <a href=”tel:5555555555″>Phone this</a> ) For regular phone calls
• youtube ex. Singing Shiba ( <a href=”youtube:rnXQDMDobHc”>Singing Shiba</a> ) Starting youtube videos
• itms ex. ZipCar App ( <a href=”itms://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/zipcar/id329384702?mt=8&uo=6″>Items</a> ) ZipCar App
• maps ex. CN Tower ( <a href=”maps:301 Front Street West, Toronto, ON”>CN Tower</a> ) Launching maps with address marker

The ability for a user to be on a site and have the web server cause an action to occur on the site, via ‘push technology‘, is soon to be realized at the HTML 5 leve. Although this type of interaction has always been available; through Flash, Java and Javascript. It’s finally being brought-up to the HTML level as noted in W3C documentation. The Stray Orange blog has a good post relating to HTML 5 push technology.